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SHELTER 130CD
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Shelter Press release of Perceptual Geography, Thomas Ankersmit's latest record. The music was created as a loosely structured piece for live performance in 2018-2019, commissioned by CTM in Berlin and Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, and premiered there on the GRM Acousmonium. The music is inspired by -- and dedicated to -- the pioneering research of American composer and installation artist Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009), and created entirely on the Serge Modular analog synthesizer. Ankersmit and Amacher first met in New York in 2000, and kept in touch over the following years. Her concerts and installations left a deep impression on him. Amacher, being close to the Tcherepnin family, also first introduced Ankersmit to the Serge synthesizer, developed by Serge Tcherepnin in the 1970s. In the piece, Ankersmit explores different "modes" of listening: not just which sounds are heard and when, but also how and where sounds are experienced (in the room, in the body, inside the head, far away, nearby). So-called otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play a prominent role. When turned up lou material moves beyond the loudspeakers and starts to trigger additional tones inside the listener's head; tones that are not present in the recorded music. Cupping the ears with the hands and slight movements of the head also help to bring these tones to life. Maryanne Amacher was the first artist to systematically explore the musical use of these phenomena, often referring to them as "ear tones". The title is a reference to Amacher's essay "Psychoacoustic Phenomena in Musical Composition: Some Features of a Perceptual Geography", and despite the all-electronic instrumentation, a dramatic sense of landscape and environment often emerges. There are sparks of fire, howling wind, distant thunder, a swarm of bats disappearing into the distance. Ghostly, floating tones are contrasted with highly dynamic sounds darting around the listener, and large, heavy waves rolling in slowly. "Ear tone" stimuli weave in and out of these textures, emerging from them. Once or twice, the music seems to completely freeze in time, but a slight movement of the listener's head reveals changes. For each live performance, Ankersmit tunes his instrument to the resonant characteristics of the performance space, so that the sounds activate the structure, traveling through the architecture and setting it in motion. The record is accompanied by an extensive conversation between Ankersmit and Serge Tcherepnin, creator of the Serge Modular and friend and collaborator of Amacher.
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SHELTER 096CD
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Thomas Ankersmit's new album for Shelter Press Homage To Dick Raaijmakers is an all-analog electronic music composition inspired by legendary Dutch composer/electronic and tape music pioneer and multimedia artist, Dick Raaijmakers (1930-2013). The work takes inspiration from Raaijmakers's music from the 1960s, his texts on sound composition like "Cahier M", and notes on his own music. On this recording, Ankersmit plays Serge Modular feedback and sine/pulse/random generators, contact mic, and tape speed variation; mirroring some of Raaijmakers's work, Ankersmit plays his Serge synthesizer as a kind of weather system. He references storms, thunder, crashing and falling objects, and distant radio transmissions in his electronic sounds, as well as dragging a contact mic across his equipment. Despite the abstract nature of the material, a sense of loss or mourning sometimes emerges from the music. With his homage Ankersmit re-contextualizes Raaijmakers's ideas about electric sound, composition, and spatial experience. Like Raaijmakers himself Ankersmit exclusively uses analog devices, such as sine/pulse/random generators, modulators, filters, and especially feedback processes between them. The music focuses on the sounds of raw electricity through creatively abused electronics, composing with analog micro-sounds, and the creation of three-dimensional sound fields. The piece also uses tones produced by the listener's own ears, inspired by Raaijmakers's thoughts on "holophonic" sound fields to be individually explored by the listener. With this phenomenon, the listener's inner ears actively generate sounds that don't exist in the recorded signal, and which can change with a small movement of the head. Homage To Dick Raaijmakers was commissioned by Sonic Acts and was premiered live at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in February 2016. Ankersmit also dedicates the work to his father Thijl Ankersmit (1947-2016), who first demonstrated feedback to him. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker.
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SHELTER 096LP
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LP version. 140 gram vinyl. Thomas Ankersmit's new album for Shelter Press Homage To Dick Raaijmakers is an all-analog electronic music composition inspired by legendary Dutch composer/electronic and tape music pioneer and multimedia artist, Dick Raaijmakers (1930-2013). The work takes inspiration from Raaijmakers's music from the 1960s, his texts on sound composition like "Cahier M", and notes on his own music. On this recording, Ankersmit plays Serge Modular feedback and sine/pulse/random generators, contact mic, and tape speed variation; mirroring some of Raaijmakers's work, Ankersmit plays his Serge synthesizer as a kind of weather system. He references storms, thunder, crashing and falling objects, and distant radio transmissions in his electronic sounds, as well as dragging a contact mic across his equipment. Despite the abstract nature of the material, a sense of loss or mourning sometimes emerges from the music. With his homage Ankersmit re-contextualizes Raaijmakers's ideas about electric sound, composition, and spatial experience. Like Raaijmakers himself Ankersmit exclusively uses analog devices, such as sine/pulse/random generators, modulators, filters, and especially feedback processes between them. The music focuses on the sounds of raw electricity through creatively abused electronics, composing with analog micro-sounds, and the creation of three-dimensional sound fields. The piece also uses tones produced by the listener's own ears, inspired by Raaijmakers's thoughts on "holophonic" sound fields to be individually explored by the listener. With this phenomenon, the listener's inner ears actively generate sounds that don't exist in the recorded signal, and which can change with a small movement of the head. Homage To Dick Raaijmakers was commissioned by Sonic Acts and was premiered live at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in February 2016. Ankersmit also dedicates the work to his father Thijl Ankersmit (1947-2016), who first demonstrated feedback to him. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker.
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TO 093CD
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Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin. Since 2006, his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge analog modular synthesizer. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000s. In the winter of 2011-2012, Ankersmit was invited by the CalArts electronic music studios, Los Angeles, where the Serge was originally developed in the early 1970s, to record new music with their heavily customized and recently restored "Black Serge" system. In addition to conventional analog synthesis techniques (FM, AM, ring modulation, filtering, enveloping and panning under voltage control), Ankersmit used various kinds of waveshaping, distortion and feedback (both internally as well as via a microphone and speaker setup in the studio); oscillator-generated frequencies at the upper and lower limits of auditory perception; a patch matrix to control quick transitions; a homemade circuit-bending type interface to create momentary interruptions to the signal flow, and the scraping of a contact microphone. Aside from recording, editing, and a few instances of reverb, no digital technology was used. The music is finely tuned and highly detailed, yet also visceral and raw. Marked by sharp perceptual contrasts, the piece shifts between dense formations of electric noise, to fields of micro-events moving with an intuitive logic, and feedback-drones of overwhelming intensity. The sounds have a real-world physicality, bringing to mind swarms of locusts, distant storms and creaking machinery, rather than "synthesizer music." The piece was premiered in North America at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles and in Europe at Berghain, Berlin, for the MaerzMusik Festival. The music is originally quadraphonic and mixed to stereo for this release. Figueroa Terrace is Ankersmit's first full-length solo studio release. Thomas Ankersmit: Serge analog modular synthesizers, contact mic. Recorded at CalArts, Valencia and in Los Angeles, December 2011-February 2012. Thanks to Kye Potter, Kevin Drumm, Valerio Tricoli, Darrel Johansen, Kevin Fortune, and everyone at CalArts. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.
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ASH 8.8CD
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Ash International presents a live recorded performance by Thomas Ankersmit in Utrecht from late in 2007. Live In Utrecht is his first official CD album release. Thomas Ankersmit is a 30 year-old saxophonist, electronic musician and installation artist born and raised in the Netherlands and now primarily based in Berlin who combines abstract, intensely-focused saxophone playing with hyper-kinetic analog synth and computer improvisation. He also creates installation pieces that use sound, infrasound and "modifications to the acoustic characters of spaces" that disrupt the viewer/listener's perception of the exhibition space and their presence within it. He frequently works together with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and Sicilian electroacoustic improviser Valerio Tricoli, and as well as other collaborators, mostly for live performances, including Tony Conrad, Maryanne Amacher, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm and Borbetomagus. Thomas Ankersmit: Serge analog modular synthesizer, computer, alto saxophone. Pre-recorded saxophone and reel-to-reel parts composed by Valerio Tricoli, with source material by Ankersmit.
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